


Words On My Skin

by ProwlingThunder



Series: First Words [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canonical Character Death, First Words Soulmarks, Gen, Grief, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want a soulmate; he's seen what it can do. That doesn't seem to matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words On My Skin

He doesn't notice them until after the funeral, when Dad helps him undo his tie, and the bold black on his father's wrist has faded to a pale white scar, _Think you can keep up?_ nearly invisible on his skin, the first words his mother ever spoke to his father, he's heard the story a thousand times. Dad doesn't seem to care if he looks, a little, but later that night he comes out of the shower and sees his father cradling his wrist, so he doesn't tell him about the _Thanks for the hand, sir,_ he found scrawled across his collar bone in the mirror, doesn't ask what it means, why the letters are different from the _Captain?_ he's worn on his ankle since he could walk.

Mom would have known, but Mom wasn't here anymore, and he doesn't really believe she's in the grave where they put her body, and he doesn't know why people want him to go talk to it. He's four and he just lost his mother, and he can see it breaking his Dad a little at a time. He doesn't want a soulmate. He doesn't want two.

 

Sally's first words to him are actually _Why didn't you dodge?_ and they are not the words on his skin, but he likes her and that's enough until she leaves, because he's five and he does not care about soulmates.

 

Toby's words are also definitely not on his skin, but the shriek as he hit the water and the prayer when Silas pulled him out are etched into his mind so they might as well be. _Don't worry, this will only hurt a lot,_ is traced down Toby's back in jagged marks, like someone clawed it there, and Silas loves him fiercely, he does, and for a time Toby lets him protect him, and Silas thinks he loves him back. They are not the words on their flesh and they do not have to be, but after several years Toby calls him on the phone and says they're done, and Silas thinks, it might have been easier if they had matched, instead of trying to fit a puzzle together that just didn't belong.

 

Basic Training comes, and trickles by. Dozens of people say, _thanks for the hand, sir,_ but nobody ever reacts to his words that way, like electricity just caught them by surprise. He decides he'll probably never find them, and that's okay, it doesn't change anything.

He intervenes in Carslile's harassment of a young new recruit, and once they've half-fled, he picks up the youth and dusts him off. “Thanks for the hand, sir,” he says, like so many others, and Silas waves off the words to hide the goosebumps that crawl over his skin in reaction.

“Let's get you fixed up,” Silas offers, and the young soldier's green eyes light up and he thinks, reflexive, _damn, he's hot._

 

He finds those words sitting on the shelf of Quinn's hip months later, and the world makes more sense, better sense. He tugs off his shirt to let him see his own words staring back at him, but when the _Captain?_ on his ankle is finally no longer a secret, he has no words to explain how or why, it just is.

 

 _Yes, Captain,_ is settled across Private Fortune's breastbone, and his Nora, beautiful Nora, is understandably upset when she figures out it is not actually someone addressing _her_.

 

When they wake some two hundred odd years in the future, _Captain?_ is a whiter scar on white skin, and in the candle-light in his old house, he and Quinn find the strangest of words tattooed on one another's flesh, identical in every way. One pair right down to the placement, the next looping easy around their biceps, and they cross them together when they rest.

_We appreciate the assistance, civilians, but what's your business here?_

_I could have handled that myself._


End file.
